Genocide Tribunal Rules Former Khmer Rouge Leader Unfit To Stand Trial

(Newsroom America) -- The genocide tribunal in Cambodia has ruled today that a 79-year-old former senior member of the Khmer Rouge is unfit to stand trial and ordered her unconditional release.

Ieng Thirith, former Social Affairs Minister for the Democratic Kampuchea, was on trial for genocide and other crimes against humanity along with her husband and former foreign minister Ieng Sary, former so-called Brother Number Two Nuon Chea, and former head of State Khieu Samphan, all leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime during the late 1970s.

In its ruling, the trial chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia said it has found that Ms. Thirith suffers from “a progressive, degenerative condition” and that her condition is unlikely to improve even with treatment.

Four expert psychiatrists who examined her in September diagnosed Ms. Thirith with clinical dementia, most likely Alzheimer’s, which would hinder her participation in court hearings.

In addition, the expert geriatrician concluded that it would be difficult for her to understand the nature of the charges against her or to follow the proceedings, to understand witness statements from events taking place 35 years ago, to instruct her counsel, or to testify in her own defence.

“The trial chamber judges are unanimously of the view that Ieng Thirith is unfit to stand trial and that the proceedings against her shall be stayed,” stated the decision handed down today.

Set up under an agreement signed in 2003 by the UN and the Government, the ECCC is an independent court that uses a mixture of Cambodian staff and judges and foreign personnel.

It is tasked with trying those deemed most responsible for crimes committed under the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979 during which as many as two million people are thought to have died.

Meanwhile the United Nations tribunal trying those most responsible for the 1994 genocide that engulfed Rwanda has found a former mayor guilty of genocide and extermination and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

In its verdict, the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) ruled that Grégoire Ndahimana, the former mayor of Kivumu commune in Kibuye prefecture, committed the crime of extermination by “aiding and abetting as well as by virtue of his command responsibility over communal police in Kivumu.” A count of complicity to genocide was dismissed.

The tribunal, which is based in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha, ordered that its sentence against Mr. Ndahimana supersede any other imposed on the accused by any other State or institution, and that he receives credit for time served since his arrest on 11 August 2009.

The majority of the trial chamber’s three-judge panel found, as a mitigating factor, that the scale of the operation that led to the destruction of a church and the killing of thousands of ethnic Tutsi civilians, reflected broad coordination among various groups, local religious authorities, as well as civilian assailants.

“Though this did in no way exonerate the accused, it did, however, suggest that his participation through aiding and abetting may have resulted from duress rather that from extremist or ethnic hatred,” the judges said in their ruling.

Mr. Ndahimana was arrested in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and was transferred to the UN Detention Facility in Arusha on 26 August 2009. He was born in Kivumu commune in 1952.

At least 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate ethnic Hutus were killed during the three months of bloodletting that followed the death of President Juvenal Habyarimana when his plane was brought down over the Rwandan capital, Kigali, on 6 April 1994.